Food shortage is their main weapon in Yemen. They strangle the land. The Saudis want to defeat the Houthi rebels. That, as a result, a million people may starve; well, too bad. That abhorrent strategy has been revived recently.”

De Waal is director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University in the United States and recently published the book Mass Starvation. …

The starving of the Yemenis happens in a very cunning way, he explains. ‘Yemen imports eighty percent of its food. A large part of this arrives in the port city of al-Hudaida. Naval vessels of the United States and Great Britain block that port at the request of the Saudis … In principle, food is allowed to go through, but due to the extensive controls this is very slow. The Saudis have bombed the container port, so unloading is also very slow. …

If someone dies of hunger, you can assume that someone else wants it to happen. That famine makes a comeback is due to human intervention. …

In 2011, drought in Somalia also claimed many victims. ‘That was partly due to the Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism law of the American government. This stipulates that any form of cooperation with terrorist groups is punishable. That was also the case for the Muslim extremist movement Al Shabaab in Somalia. Even if Al Shabaab would steal one food truck, the Red Cross could already be prosecuted. The aid then stalled. Only after nine months a solution came. Then 260,000 Somalis had already succumbed. The war on terror policy was more important than offering help. That is unethical. Governments must take far more into account the global consequences of their policies.”…

What does he think should happen? “We must prosecute perpetrators. That is difficult. But a prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague must find it attractive to be the first person to indict a suspect of death by famine.”